me in contact with him.

Tama visits us very frequently, and often brings his wife with him. She
is a pleasant, buxom body, with a contented smile always on her face.
Though not young, being probably between thirty and forty, she has not
yet grown at all hag-like, as Maori women generally do. She dresses
cleanly and nicely--cotton or chintz gowns being her usual wear--but she
leans to an efflorescence of colour in her bonnet, and has a perfect
passion for brilliant tartan shawls. I think I once saw her at the
Otamatea races in a blue silk dress. But, both she and her husband have
discarded all the feathers and shells and pebbles that are purely native
adornments.

Astute and intelligent as Tama really is, it is, of course, to be
expected that he cannot comprehend all the novelties of civilization.
His deportment is always admirable, and he would carry himself through a
drawing-room without any sensible _gaucherie_. He would be calm,
composed, and dignified among any surroundings, however strange to him;
only his keen and roving eyes would betray his internal wonder. Like
Maoris in general, he is critically observant of every little thing
among his Pakeha friends, but, with true native courtesy, endeavours to
hide from you that he is so. But the extraordinary mixture of grave
intelligence and childish simplicity in him is perpetually leading to
very quaint little incidents.

One day, when routing among the "personals" I had brought with me from
England, I discovered at the bottom of my chest an umbrella. Now, in
England, I suppose most people consider an umbrella as quite an
indispensable article of attire, and even in colonial cities its use is
by no means uncommon; but I need hardly say that in the bush such a
thing is never seen.

I brought out my relic of other days, and displayed it to the boys in
the shanty. It was received with great applause, and I was unmercifully
chaffed. It pleases our community to regard all the comforts and
luxuries of a more complete civilization as effeminacies; and it is the
received theory among us that we live the purest and highest life,
having turned our backs upon all the corrupting influences of an effete,
old world.

There is among us a party, headed by O'Gaygun, who take the position of
ultra-conservatives; the object of their conservatism being the keeping
alive of all the most primitive usages of the bush. To them anything new
is an insult; the introduction of imported com